It is not all laughter, all the time.
Who can laugh when the roof leaks
And the walls give way to floods?
Laughter is a seasoning of salt, and
Salt is not food but a seasoning for food.
Thay have their sorrows, these men of the land,
Poverty stalks them by the hour
And the kente is a flash in their lives:
handed down the rungs of years
From uncle to nephew through mother’s stream.
Times dintegrating fingers, have by stealth
Loosened the threads
Where the
Weaver of
Bonwire
Had joined
The strips.
The dyes in the colours, red, blue, gold and green
sapped by the devilry of age,
Have paled to where they can fade no more.
But to them, there is no matter for grief:
life has other gifts.

from Kwesi Brew’s Return of No Return and other Poems.